The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Hi, Ginger. Can you hear us? I will put you as presenter. Hi, Ginger. I just put you as presenter. Can you try testing the mic to see if this works? Hi, Ginger.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Say hello and good morning to everyone. Confirm you are not hearing me?
>> Hey, Ginger. I can hear you now.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Okay. Good morning. Unfortunately my mic is not working. Are you having any interference or echo with this medium?
>> I can hear you as well. We're about to start, which puts you in the other session. We will start in two minutes time.
>> GINGER PAQUE: David, can you confirm that you can hear me?
>> Hi, Ginger. I can hear you. Hi, Ginger. You are very clear.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Great. Thanks. Thanks very much. We're all set then.
>> DAVID NG: We think we will be about to start in 2 minutes time because I do think it's a fairly early meeting at 9:00 a.m. It is about how to make participation in two minutes. We are waiting for more persons to join with us. Before we start, this session is working with the interaction rate. I would like to invite people sitting in the back and maybe also sit upfront to join the discussion. Please feel free to do so. So, once again, thanks, everyone, for joining this session. This session is about how we can make remote participation sustainable. And I do think it is important to get something e‑mail participation in a sense since this is a fairly early meeting and there are people on the way for joining the meeting. Thanks, everyone, for joining. This session is interactive rate. We can talk about how we can make remote participation on EC for everyone to join.
As we know, I'm David from dot Asia. Discussing with the youth in the region in Asia, we do find it is particularly to support more youth to engage in the discussion of internet in a sense to direct participate in the conferences. That's why we agenda ideas of this workshop of how we can make the remote participation more easy for everyone to attend a conference and talk about a trouble and accommodation. This kind of ‑‑ (lost sound) barriers are very important to talking about this in this session.
So thanks, everyone, for joining again. I would like to talk about how we can structure the whole discussion for this one hour of time.
Firstly, I would like some introduction for the program. I also want to give some ideas of how the currency situation ‑‑ currency situation is. This is for the community and how they think the situation is. We also talk about the survey in a sense to know about the current situation. We have 40 minutes of time to discuss. As you can see, I put two different things on site, which is us. Also for status of the output discussion, we talk about remote participation. We really focus on how we can engage to remote participants in a sense. We also got remote participation facilitators with Ginger and Hailey who joined us to be the facilitators on the remote check room. After the discussion, we have 20 minutes of our recap from the groups to share about how they feel we can make light of the situation and contribute to give something outputs paper pertaining to the IGF secretary to make the situation improve in the coming meetings.
So I will just pass the time to my colleagues to talk about the survey we have done in the past month to know about our situation. Thank you.
>> YANNIS LI: Thanks, David. Yeah. So this is Yannis for the record. We have circulated a survey before about 32 days, which is about a month earlier before we had this conference. So far, we have received 28 responses, which I have to admit is not that represented, but for the survey, we would like to get some ideas to kick start discussions and not trying to be very representative in that sense. So the survey is very short. We just have ten questions. So let me go to the result. Let me share this link to the remote participant as well. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So let's go for the questions briefly. So the first question we asked what age group they belong to. The majority is 80 to 30. So basically covered most of the participants, I guess. And then the second questions is: Have you ever painted remotely for age discussions? And the answer was yes. 23 versus 5 respondents that said no. And then from then on, we asked why they didn't participate. And those said they haven't participated before is because they're not aware of the opportunities and they might not be aware of the IG discussions or not aware of the channels and they can join the discussions.
So for adults ‑‑ so for who continued for third questions, we asked whether they have continued to participate and why. So for those, most of them said yes because they found it important and here for the academia some of them. They want to share that with the students and also want to engage. Those that can participate they want to spread and get more people to join as well and that's one of the reasons. And for the fourth question, what are the key reasons for not attending remotely? So we gave separate choices for them and also to let them specify any other reasons. So, actually what we found and what is about the time zone problem, which is I guess very critical for most of us. Like for example, actually right now in Mexico, it would be totally upside down the time zone from Asia. Some of them may have a day job, which they will I. fear with day job, the time. Otherwise, they have to join night and some of them say they also need like rest time. So they couldn't really have that much spare time to join these discussions.
And the second main reasons is the interactions is either both ‑‑ their own connections at home or all the house connection is unstable. So I think the technical challenge and also both the time zone is what we've always been known for is the major reasons why we couldn't get more participation remotely. And also the third major reason is the moderator has not enabled remote participants. I guess that's some of the comments underneath that mentioned that remote participate ants are not valued as much as if they participate on site and they feel neglected by the moderators some of the time. So that's as well. And also some of them feel they're not motivated to join the discussions. So motivation is another great challenge. Actually also in some of the comments mentioned is more about how we engaged them and what motivated them to join. So actually, we'll have more findings afterwords on that.
Also another challenge that our four respondents threw out is they found difficulties participating as a newcomer. Capacity building is one of the things we'll have to deal with as well. Another question. 60% say no on this. But there are 11 people who said they have joined before. We didn't ask about their experience. For question 6, we asked if there's any remote (inaudible) in the region and so it is also a half. For question 7, will you be interested to host a remote hub? I guess most of the respondents actually are saying they're interested, which I think is a good way to get other people, but it a huge challenge as well also due to the time zone because it is hard to get people to join if the time zone is at night, especially also if during like a prime time in the morning. So people get to work. If they're not, it would are difficult to get them. Yes. That's all eye challenge to host remote hub. And also, of course, there is the technical challenge. Some of them have issues as well they could not support to host a hub. And then for question 8, we asked what the current use they use for remote participation? Mostly it is a W Connect which are major to use that web base is what they're using right now and for Adobe Connect is more widely used in iCam meetings.
Many more discussions are using that and a mailing list and social media are also the other major ones they've used. And then we asked about what they think about the current use and how ‑‑ so what do you think about a current use and whether they're optimal for IGF. Actually, one of the very important comments that we saw is it generally works well. But then if somebody was disabled, it might not be very well for them and also language is another issue. So if they don't speak English, then it is actually hard for them to join because it is more English focused in most of the cases. So different people might be comfortable with different things, so we need to really figure that out.
And also there is also a positive comment on that. It is good that we have the recording and we can refer to it more quickly after meetings and even if they couldn't join on site, then they can still listen later to the recording. So that's one of the important findings that we see from this comment. Yeah. And so the last questions we asked is valid suggestions and we believe that after our discussions to find out more.
>> DAVID NG: Thank you, Yannis. There are some language barriers and also the time zone limitation. And also talking about interest. Sometimes we occupy our own work or even if you face by those studies. So I think we'll talk about some barriers we're facing in the discussion. The reason of having the research is mainly about how we can make suggestion. So for a few minutes in time, we'll make some suggestions to the whole discussion. I would like to show the question of the 30 minute discussions. We can break out in groups and make suggestions to the IGF secretaries on the issues. I will show the PowerPoint of the guiding question to have a quick look.
So we got seven questions to focus on. It is just guiding questions. In a sense, the main purpose of this guiding question is how we can make suggestions is talk about the reasons of the remote participants that are taking place remotely and how we can attract the new participants to join with us.
How to make a person feel more inclusive. From your own perspective for this time, you can join the conference in person.
How about if we really can't join the IGF, how can the situation be done in a sense to help you to participate in the coming meeting?
The fifth question is about how we can attract more people to join remote hub or is there other mechanism in a sense because remote participation is not just talk about how we can participate on site during this conference. It can also be influenced on the pre-defend or post defend. So this question is talking about on this.
How we can help you in particular to get started. So it is also the other question we want to focus on.
How do we move the barriers we have mentioned for the remote participants to join? That's the seventh question and I will just give it on post to break out into groups. Okay. I also ‑‑
>> I love how we were on site. We wanted to talk about remote. That's really funny. But anyways, there's around 30 people here today. Those are great guiding questions, but I will put in full big categories that we break out and discuss. So I think the first one will be the organization. There are a lot of complaints about the time zone. So how should we enable these workshop different sessions ‑‑ oh, my gosh. The camera is making ‑‑ so how should we enable these workshop organizers to be aware of the time zone issues and how we can rotate.
So for example, we have rotation for one that's best for Asian time zone and one that's better for Latin America. So this is a key thing that I think should be built with these workshop organizers or whoever is organizing the Intersessional meetings. The second part has to do with motivation. We heard a lot about the promotion part, social media involvement, the localization part. How can we do better with that? I think that's a second category. The third would be capacity building for remote participate ants. I mentioned the organizers of the works shop. The third one is remote participants because they felt they probably need some training to speak up to communicate clearly what they wanted.
The second is how can we enable them to organize a remote hub. If so, then that could solve some of the issues they might not have very stable Internet in their homes, but probably a remote hub that would be a little better. And thirdly, how do we enable new comers that are remote participants. And the fourth is how do we enable a moderator ‑‑ for example, David tested everything before. He spoke to Hailey, he spoke to Ginger about the starting of the event. How do we have them know more aware of remote interventions, testing remote like technical issues. So I think those are the four areas we can kind of break out to.
So again, it is organization for the organizer. The motivation part, the capacity and during the event, how do we enable moderators. So I think we can break out into four different ‑‑ three groups. We can break into three groups and choose one topic that it really ‑‑ you're more passionate about. We were super lucky to have a funding to be here today, but not everyone can. I think be mindful of how lucky we are to break out here and we have moderators that are available like Ginger and Hailey would be moderating the remote participants. That's super important.
>> Hello. One of those who routed for this session. It was almost excluded, but we luckily brought it back on thread because I think that there are remote participation or online participation, which I think is a better term is a really important thing. And not only, you know, tweeting from the sessions, but actually including people with voice and image ideally. In that sense, I also think that maybe we should add or maybe the issue I want is already included in one of the groups regarding how can we improve the workshop proposing templates and instructions in order to improve online participation at the conference. Because online participation and workshop organizers plan how they plan to implement it is a part of the workshop proposal. And it is a thing that we use among other things great proposals for IGF. So ‑‑ so we should perhaps redraft the proposal template or provide better guidelines for the workshop proposers. So maybe this could also be how to do that be a topic for discussion.
>> DAVID NG: Thank you. It's a very good suggestion about the workshop proposal to insure remote participation to work smoothly. Right now we'll be having an output discussion. I would like to say in this way yet please.
>> I will ask if it is possible to show the questionnaire result on a hyper link that we can look at the result?
>> DAVID NG: It was in the remote chatroom and I can also show it in the Powerpoint for everyone to have a look on this.
Right now, we're going into three different groups. I would like to invite Renata. Get on the back to be the second group. And I'll be sitting here for the third group. And I think because of the time limit, maybe we shorten the period of time to be like 20 minutes for the discussion.
>> Just one comment. As we are on site and now we are going to breakout group to discuss, how do we choose the topics we're most passionate about? Do we fight to death?
[Laughter]
>> DAVID NG: Yeah. It's just on the group to discuss. You can decide. Yeah. And also get feedback from Ginger. Maybe put Ginger on mic as we mentioned about in the research, the result the voice and also the chatroom discussion is better to give voice to remote participants. Thank you.
(discussion in groups)
>> YANNIS LI: This is Yannis. I guess Ginger maybe dropped right now. I will read out what is mentioned from a chat. So there's a reminder saying that we need to think to be physically present is not just about funding. There can be other reasons about time, dedication. That's my add on in the time dedication. It was meant that presence is not just about funding. When I think about this issue and during discussions and then also Ginger mentioned as a MAG member, she pushed for these sessions and would like to point out there is a section about online participation. So as a remote participant, so there are things that we as organizers need to be aware of and change. Remote participation, evaluation of the works is actually a very strong component of the workshop. So that's what she mentioned. And then ‑‑ yeah. That's basically the comments. Okay. So I guess let's break out into groups right now. Maybe we repeat who is talking about which topic.
So Renata will be the capacity building. If you are interested in capacity building, please follow her. And Bianca will be about organization. The better guidelines, the wash up guidelines and David will be on motivation and time, I guess. Yeah. So Renata will be to that corner and David could stay this corner and Bianca can occupy space
(breakout in groups)
>> Sorry for disturbing, but I want to remind everyone. We are looking at the time and we have about four minutes left for discussions. Everybody hears me? Are you listening to me?
>> Yeah. Is this Ginger speaking?
>> DAVID NG: This is about the time to be getting back to the last group for a report. So can everyone join back to the round table for a short recap and we will run out the session.
>> We have the enable organization, but we couldn't hear any one of you talking.
>> YANNIS LI: So we were just? A breakout group discussion right now, but because of the time, we only have one hour for this session. I guess we have to assume to the large discussions and we have to report each group's findings right now.
>> DAVID NG: After a report, we do want to have remote voice and give me some feedbacks especially from the discussion in the chat room. So we would like to have the group moderator Bianca, Renata and me to report on what we have discussed. And then we will go to remote facilitators Ginger and Hailey to speak a bit and recap a bit on discussions in the chat room and sharing some things. We have two minutes of time to do a recap and we hope to keep the time and not running out to lunch. So maybe we can start from Bianca about the organization of discussion.
>> BIANCA HO: Hi. We were in a breakout room earlier and I was specifically on the organization part. This is the first remote participation workshop that we've had. I think there's a lot we need to improve on. The organization part and I had a group of really interesting and engaging participations. Icam is probably easier to remote participation tools. The thing is how we should integrate the chat. I felt a lot of remote participate ants are in the chat versus us who are here present outside the chat. He mentioned a few things.
One thing is making it easier to find the remote participation tools and the tool is good enough and easy to use that even people in the room are part of it. So even people can read the chat on‑screen. So that's another thing other than only broadcasting what is happening here. We should also broadcast the chat. People in the room are also aware of what the chat room is happening. Chat is also a more casual format.
One of the Hong Kong youth IGF participants mentioned that because it is more informal and they feel more interested instead of a block of text. And the other part of it also mentioned that there are a few things in the room that should happen. The moderator should be in the chat room, session chair and there should also be reporting on the actual remote participation chat. That's in the report. So in that way, we can make the chat room also a good ground for speaking and include that in part of our discussion. And yeah. So I think that's kind of where we are on the organization and there are a few things that we can implement right away, and things we probably need more coordination, but that's where we are going to stop.
>> DAVID NG: Thank you, Bianca. And on the motivation part, we do have some suggestion on how we can (inaudible) from the community in the sense. First suggestion is about we can have more education and engaging young people in the sense on the discussion. For example, we got students ‑‑ we got some suggestion like having and maybe talk about law and set of crime sessions. We can have some discussion and introducing the IGF uses and related issues in a sense in the curriculum. So this is the first way.
And the second way is participants encouraging them to participate in the discussion as a reward. And more importantly, I do think for the third point, we have to make some suggestions about making the participants feel they are part of it and including the result, discussion result from the remote participants to the discussion and also discussion outcome papers including the forces from the participant remotely. So these are the points we have made.
And also for the third point is the remote hub can be set beforehand the meetings or after meetings that helps the situation to improve. So there's the four areas and four suggestions we have made to make people to be motivated. Right now, we also want to invite Renata to talk about capacity reading parts. Thank you.
>> RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Thank you. Indeed. The capacity building work shared many insights on how do we build for successful remote participation. And we brought insides from before, during and after a remote participation experience. So before preparing remote participation. How does one register to a remote participation session? Is the registration accessible? We had great input from a colleague about the dynamic coalition of success and accessibility which has built a document available to gather knowledge on how to do an accessible registration and remote participation experience, analogy, quite interesting if there is a building and you can't get in, how are you going to participate.
So, um, that would be the before the remote participation experience. And during the remote participation experience, also we talked a lot about standards and protocols like for instance, non‑verbal protocols or queues that we have and non‑verbal communication which do not translate to remote participations. And looking at each other's eyes instead of actually asking the question or gathering a record that this is consensus. So remembering to translate the non‑verbal cues is very important as well. And this should be something agreed upon on remote participation experiences.
Also translating standards and protocols. There's a universe of tools for remote participation and tools also increasingly freely available for their code or for demo versions. So experimenting with these tools and building upon them is pretty interesting. Leandro made here quite an interesting list. A colleague from the group left some interesting aspects of it.
>> LEANDRO: Leandro, for the record, we talk about accessibility, exchange of knowledge, but we also talk ‑‑ we're talking about online participation. We should also be thinking about these powerful new tools repository codes, sharing knowledge through APIs, make things starting from taking an API to translate the whole transcriptions in every language to user interface that it's really good that a colleague was talking. So with the group, I think that we should also add new tools that are available in code and it can make ‑‑ we can make it happen. Thanks.
>> RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Yes. So continuing down our participation journey, building blocks, the environment was mentioned the intercommunity ISA event which had several blocks of translation support, chat on that online participation that the user can use. And the building blocks will generate the last part of our journey, which is after the remote participation experience. The importance of record keeping. So live scribing for multi‑cultural, multi‑lingual support is also very important. Telling participants how to use those transcripts, how to disseminate them and how to easily search through them in order to get their information. There is difference in connectivities in regions and you may have some participants which are highly connected in a broadband environment. All those participants should have easy access to the same information, being kept on a record for live scribing capabilities and through languages support.
A suggestion that was made to the MAG to reinforce the importance of U.N. in languages support whenever possible have varied languages material translated at least in the U.N. in languages set. And I guess I would sum up our experience on the capacity building breakout group as learning about standards and protocols to remote participate. To make remote participation more effective, we need to exchange information before, during and after the remote participation experience.
>> DAVID NG: Thank you, Renata. We do get a very good patch on how we're doing capacity building issues. As I also mentioned, we have remote facilitators have the having the chat room discussion. I would like to invite Hailey to recap a bit on what we have in the chat room. I am happy to see in the chat room you have keen discussion on how we can do better on the remote participation. I do think for remote, there is quite a new issue for us. You still have room to be improved, but I first want to invite Hailey to recap a bit and follow by Ginger maybe. Could the host help giving Hailey be ‑‑ be the representer? Yeah. Her to be ‑‑
>> (speaking)
>> DAVID NG: Her to be presenter. Hailey, yeah.
>> Testing?
>> DAVID NG: Yeah. We can hear you, Hailey.
>> HAILEY YANG: Good morning, everyone. I'm sorry just now the mic (inaudible). I was reading their chat and it's scrolling down and I cannot copy and paste for the chat. And basically we had a very good discussion in the chat room just now. And based on these three categories, motivation, organization and capacity, mainly the four points.
First of all, it's about the accessibility. Not everyone has the accessible tools to get online. And the second point is that someone suggest that we have to let the remote participants so they can be in the meeting. And the last one is remote participation. Just like now, they're separate from the on site participants. It is suggested to have the Skype maybe to let them get more involved and also the registration for the online ‑‑ well, it talks a long time to get registered for this remote participation.
So, for the second part, which is the motivations, there are many points as well. The first point is good to make a session. It would be good to make a session for remote participants to call in and make summation during the whole discussion so that they can be more getting involved. And remote participant also has ‑‑ they are usually filled out to be isolated, but not present in the discussion. So it is something that we have to be aware of. And the second point is about it is good to check the comments right ‑‑ like in the meeting so that throughout the workshop so that they can be more engaged.
And finally, it is suggested to have someone who is really dedicated to the remote participant to let them get involved in the whole discussion. And for the final part about the capacity building, the first one is suggested to assign a new format for the participant so that they can be more involved, like more advanced to the chat room now. And the second point is that it is good to have the resources now. Organize and perhaps on more participation chances. And the third point is about it is good to create and build more advanced online participants to get involved in. And the fourth point is about it is good to have a training for the organizer and also the remote moderators and not just the online participants. And the final point is: It is advised to have more on‑site training and human resources available so that the remote participant can bring into a dynamic reality. This will sum up the whole remote discussion we had just now and I think Ginger can edit some more points. Thank you.
>> DAVID NG: Thanks, Hailey, for the recap. There are ways to do recap for remote facilitators and we also got Ginger as to remote facilitators. Ginger, you want to add on to getting some feedbacks on the whole discussion? Can the host put Ginger as presenter? Ginger, are you speaking right now?
>> YANNIS LI: This is Yannis. Ginger, we don't seem to hear you if you were speaking right now. It seems you are speaking right now and we are not hearing you as well still. I saw your mic, but we don't hear your audio. I'm not sure if that's technical issue that the staff is working on. While we oh on it, I want to add on to what Hailey said. Actually, on a discussion that was very active just now and actually there is also one thing mentioned which is similar to the group which is the design of the workshop in breakout discussions. So hard to engage the online participants and to different groups, but we do have a very active discussions in the remote groups. And they want to be included in each group. So there are some technical issues that the tools have to enable that. So that's also one thing that I want do add on.
>> DAVID NG: Thank you, Yannis. As we get the section for this, for doing so, we wrap up for the whole section. Thanks, everyone, for joining on site and remotely for the discussion. For this session, we do feel there are difficulties on how we can engage both discussions and even like engaging ‑‑ engaging people to voice in the remote panels and also in the remote hubs and also the chat rooms to participate in the whole session. So, I would like to give a last word to Renata.
>> RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: I just wanted to congratulate everyone. I guess championing this workshop and making it happen is already a huge effort towards inclusion and remote participation and sections in the IGF. Very, very needed. So congratulations all and to all the participants, as well.
>> DAVID NG: Coming from Ginger, we can channel a discussion and everyone channeling in the discussion is a very good idea. We will be doing a remote discussion on a better way to discuss in the host sense. Thank you, Ginger and thank you, everyone. Thank you. Round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]
Workshop ended at 10:15 am CST.